All the King's Horses
by timeespaceandpixiedust
Summary: Clarke knows she sounds like a feral animal trying to rip apart the throat of its prey. It is not lost on her that she presents herself as insane and demented and crazed to the very core of her being. She is aware this is exactly how she comes across and she doesn't care. Post 3x02. One-shot


**This came to be from me avoiding studying. I would say less Clexa and more so Clarke facing some feelings and drowning in the rest of them. I'm slightly considering writing a second chapter to flesh out some more Clarke/Lexa interaction so I guess let me know if anyone would be interested in reading that. Anyway, enjoy!**

Clarke knows she sounds like a feral animal trying to rip apart the throat of its prey. It is not lost on her that she presents herself as insane and demented and crazed to the very core of her being. She is aware this is exactly how she comes across and she doesn't care.

Her arms fight against the guards bonds and her mouth has already filled with more saliva, ready to spit in the face of her betrayer once more. But she's dragged down flight after flight of stairs, her motions jerky and desperate the whole way.

The hands around her arms are tight like vices and she feels nails digging through to her skin as they try and subdue her through pain. But little do they know that she is not just the commander of death, she is a warrior of life. A little pain will do nothing to hold her back. What does eventually stop her flailing legs and terrible, gasping screams, is the fire that spreads in her lungs and the tears she feels through each muscle. She has been weak for three months and eighteen days and the adrenaline is gone. It has dried up before she's ever made it somewhere safe. Resources can only last so long before they dry out.

These same stairs that she had been forced to climb with a bag over her head and a leaden lump in her chest seem to last even longer now that she's going down. It wouldn't be a surprise if the guards were to throw her to the dungeons below and leave her there to rot forever as payment for spitting in their beloved Heda's face.

But no, war is brewing and Lexa _needs_ her and so she's going to play allies again after she had made it so very clear that they were nothing but the worst of enemies.

So Clarke is thrown into a room where there is a bed covered in furs and a stack of books on a desk with a chair in the corner of the room. There is a wooden dresser against the wall and the one thing she immediately notes there isn't is any item that could be used in the slightest as a weapon. Even the window is set too far back past the metal bars for Clarke to attempt to break the glass. She doesn't know if this is done to protect everyone around her or to try and protect her from herself. There is some semblance of a bathroom as well and Clarke has been relieving herself in the forest for so long that the thought of even just a hole in the ground doesn't sound so terrible.

For a moment she is useless on the floor. She doesn't make a move to stand or investigate or fight. She is tired and weak and scared and her breath comes too fast while her hands shake and she can't even figure out if it's from weakness or anger.

But then she gets her answer because rage courses through her blood and infects her muscles and is created through her bones. She is a wild animal who has been caged and she makes sure this whole damn tribe knows it. She is vile and messy in her actions. She uses energy she doesn't have to attack walls and kick at doors and scream out miserable, venomous words. There is an enemy outside this room and she wants to kill and destroy and defeat everyone who holds her back from that girl.

When the door opens again she is a form half dazed that is supported against a wall and hits it with the last ounce of strength she has over and over, like some feeble knock in order to get in. The figure is not alone. It is three different men, all tall and big and probably meant to be intimidating. Clarke forgot what intimidation was like since she killed the last man who'd attempted it on her.

They speak in Trigedasleng around here and she wonders if they know that she speaks their language now.

" _Teik em raun."_ The man in the middle says. Take her down, she knows he means. Clarke fights with what's left in her. She is on the ground in a second. "Heda Leksa warned us not to hurt the commander of death," he says, a wet cloth in hand as he hovers over her face and begins to wipe across the dirty, blood streaked marks along her skin. "You will not be harmed."

Funny how he interprets the fury in her eyes as fear. She doesn't have enough room in her body to be afraid, not with the guilt and the anger and sadness taking up every available space. The desire to speak back is strong, she wanted to spit Trigedasleng in their face, but she knows to be smart. If the Commander is foolish enough to think she has been living amongst Grounders for months and not have picked up their language, then let her foolery pay off in Clarke's favour.

These men work as a unit as they clean and bandage Clarke back together again. They start with washing her. The guards pick up her wasted body and move her to the bathroom where she does not fight. There is some sort of well system right over the makeshift tub and they run it, washing first her hair and then her body. They leave on her shirt and her underwear though she is soaked through and feels even more exposed than her entire night with Nylah had left her. The soap runs in her eyes as they rinse her, but it doesn't sting. They lift her and place her soaked body back on the floor of the bedroom.

The man in charge rubs salve on her larger wounds and all three speak rituals as they wrap her wounds in white cloth. They are gentle and methodical and she knows no harm will come, but she thinks perhaps if there was any fight left in her body it would be unleashed regardless. They do not cross their boundaries, leaving her breasts untouched and her underwear intact the whole time. When they finally leave her she has a stack of clothes sitting beside her to put on, scratchy linens and what can only be defined as overlying armour. As if this Wanheda was anything like their Heda. As if she must be dressed and prepared for battle at any given moment. As if she would ever go to war for these savages.

She gets in the bed still in her wet shirt and underwear and lies atop the furs. Every part of her wants to fight to stay awake but she has been weakened by her journeys and exhausted by her anger. She falls asleep without knowing it is happening.

When she awakens the room is cloaked in utter darkness and there is nothing but a flicker of light beneath the door. With all the demons Clarke has faced darkness is hardly something to fear. However, she does know how it hides the truth and deludes the lies. She knows that darkness has a strength just as mighty as light and she worries it will be her downfall as she lays a prisoner in this cell of war.

There is something sitting just inside the door and she can see how the light shifts around it. She gets out of bed, her bare feet finding the cold floor, and she pushes past their rejection of walking on it. Kneeling before the object Clarke reaches out her hands and they find something soft but rough. She brings it just before her eyes and catches the scent. Bread. It is a whole plate of food and a cup of water and Clarke knows they could poison her or slip sleeping herbs into anything they wanted but she doesn't even care. She eats greedily, the grease of a room temperature lamb leg running down her chin and bread crumbs collecting in the corners of her mouth. She drinks the whole cup of water down before she is finished and regrets her decision because the rich cheese sits in the back of her throat as she swallows the rest of it down.

She sits back from the plate and uses the bottom of her shirt to wipe at her face. In the wild she had fared just fine. But the energy she expended getting her meals was only ever just barely replaced with what she was able to eat. A full meal like this was a luxury and even this Clarke wasn't one to turn down something so succulent.

She doesn't move from the floor, sitting against the bed before she moves to lying down flat, staring at the blank ceiling. After so many nights of watching speckled stars through tree branches, Clarke feels like she is missing something. Her mind paints the image and her hands itch to join in. What a silly desire, amidst all of her efforts to survive and fight and stay strong and she still yearned for a brush in her hand and a line of charcoal along her forehead. It was these sorts of longings specifically that reminded her of who she used to be. With an anger that boils up out of sadness Clarke stands from the floor, early morning light now pouring through the barred of window.

She heads for the desk and lifts the chair. She picks it up and swings it down in a singular motion, a cry breaking past her lips as it hits the floor. It's well made as the frame doesn't even splinter. She picks it up again and starts in on a stone wall, holding steady to the back of the chair with each rage filled slam. When it hits the wall she does not think of the dead children of Mount Weather and she does not remember her father's floating form and it erases Finn's blood from her hands. Anger swallows everything whole and she is so grateful that she is consumed by fire. In the fire she does not feel the broken skin of her hands or the blisters along her heels or the bruises in her side. In fire she feels nothing but burning agony and righteous wrath.

The door slams open and even though Clarke is no longer afraid of anything, she jumps and the chair slips through her grasp. Or well, what was left of it. Somewhere in her fire she had managed to smash off legs and chunks of wood. She doesn't think about who she must be to do something so violent without thought. She thinks only of who she knows she is: the commander of death.

"I see you've calmed down," the Commander speaks with dry words and an impassive face as she looks from Clarke to the pile of wood surrounding her. There are no words to speak back. Clarke had said everything she'd needed to the day prior. The Commander was not worth anymore words. "I see Ranson attended to your wounds."

Her heart gains speed and her hands no longer itch for a brush but a gun. She wants to put a bullet through the Commander's head and maybe through her own as well. This was the person she had become. She didn't know if she minded.

"I understand why you…hate me, Clarke." The hesitation in her words is what makes Clarke realise the Commander was alone, stripped bare of her duty to be strong when she was in front of only the girl who had seen her weak. "What happened at the Mountain-"

"Don't" she snarls out, finding there were more words after all. "You don't get to feel remorse now." There was no point in the guilt that came after. People stayed dead and hearts remained broken and alliances were still destroyed. No amount of apologies would ever change that.

"I do not feel remorse," the Commander speaks evenly and Clarke hates how in control she gets to pretend to be when Clarke had been forced to hand her control over in the course of her actions. She was in control of no one, particularly herself. "What's done is done and I would not change it."

Maybe that was worse but it almost makes Clarke feel better. If the Commander regrets nothing then she is exactly the same person who abandoned their alliance and walked away. She was the same liar who told Roan his banishment would be lifted and then locked him in a prison. The Commander was a liar and Clarke had no desire to so much as look at liars. "You might as well kill me now," Clarke says, forming tight fists with her sore hands, her jaw clicking with fury and her heart pounding faster to pump through all of the rage. "Because I will _never_ stop trying to murder you."

The words are dripped in ice and soaked in blood. It is a promise that she had forged when the ground was too hard against her back and the river too cold on her feet and the herbs too rough on her stomach. Ask her once and she might say she didn't want any more blood on her hands. Ask her twice and she will hold back no more truth as the Commander's name fills her head with a blind rage and her heart with black betrayal.

If the Commander is bothered by the words she doesn't react. She stands a little taller, lifting her head a little higher, but there is no sign of fear or worry or guilt. "You are safe here, Clarke."

With a scoff Clarke kicks amongst the pile of broken chair pieces, noticing for the first time the blood that was dripping from her hand to the floor. "You think I'm worried about safety? You think I'm trying to preserve what's left of my life?" If she'd wanted to die she would have already. She had intentions of survival but if the Commander was so determined to keep her alive then Clarke thought nothing better than to take that away from her. "You think I care to listen to your words? The words of a liar?"

That causes her to falter back a step and Clarke thinks of confrontation in tents and the truth of emotions and Costia and Gustus and all those they had let die. She thinks of how the Commander looked then with her warrior make up and full battle gear and a determination in her eyes that wormed away as the fear of her reality came sneaking up on her, closer with each step Clarke took towards her until she had nowhere left to go and the losses she had faced and the deaths she had created greeted her with a heavy thud and an unrelenting stare.

"What is happening is bigger than what has happened between us in the past," she says as if she has any right to decide that. As if the Commander gets to decide if the alliance she had broken could be forged again because she decided it was of little consequence. "My coalition is a never ending battle and now it is leading us to a war."

"Look where your last war left me," Clarke shoots back and she takes a step forward because spitting in her face had been one thing but a hand wrapped around her throat or an open-faced palm against her cheek would be so much more. "You're out of luck this time. It doesn't matter how desperately you need me. I don't care if all eleven of your tribes are burned to the ground by the Ice Nation. I don't care if you are tortured and dying right in front of my eyes. Because I. Don't. Need. You." She narrows her eyes and fixes them on the Commander, on her clean, empty face and her too green eyes and her braided back hair. She dives right past the controlled portion of who she presents and sees the hurt and the worry and the loss that never quite leaves her.

She blinks and her breathing is faltered by a single breath as she inhales too deeply and it comes out in broken bits of an exhale. "You do, though, Clarke."

"Stop saying my name!" she shouts because Lexa was always saying her name, calling it as a warning or whispering it in conversation or declaring it in agreeance. But it wasn't hers to use anymore. She didn't get to throw her name around and pull Clarke in when it fell past her lips too softly or was held in her eyes with some twisted form of affection. Her name was not a tool to be used. "Just get out."

"There are things going on you need to know," she says in a rush. "Danger that is at every corner that you-"

" _You_ are the only danger I have encountered," she lies. "So either set me free or get the hell out."

She leaves and Clarke tries not to care. When she turns to walk away, though, all she sees are flickering torches and a retreating army carrying her hope away with their swords and shields.


End file.
